November 29, 2005 | Tuesday

Web is main research tool for car buyers

By Jackie Danicki - Blogger  in Marketing |News |Online Sales |Search Research

This week’s New Media Age features news from Capgemini’s 2005 Cars Online report that the internet has taken over as the primary source of information for car buyers when researching which to purchase. According to the report:

For the first time in the course of the global study, the Internet has become the number one information source used by consumers when researching vehicles, surpassing family and friends and manufacturer-specific dealers. More than 60% of consumer respondents said they use the web, up from less than 20% three years ago. The time has come for manufacturers and dealers to view the Internet as an established, mature medium and integrate the channel even further into their marketing strategy and adjust their spend accordingly. This is particularly critical given the web’s ability to impact sales. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said that having the web features they consider important—product and price information, vehicle configurators and cost calculators—would make them more likely to buy from that manufacturer.

This follows hot on the heels of Yahoo’s research on car buyers’ use of search, which revealed that nearly 70% of automotive researchers who bought a vehicle first went to a search engine to investigate their purchase.

For more on the power of the web for reaching auto shoppers, see the results achieved by Latitude for Lookers car dealerships. 

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